Male tribunes burst out of shed, playing nasty

In news you might have missed this week, it was International Men's Day on Tuesday. To honour the occasion, a group of men's rights' activists hosted a ''men's and fathers' strategic roundtable'' in Parliament House.

The forum comprised male community leaders, men from the shed movement, men's health experts and the like. It was organised and chaired by Warwick Marsh, the chief executive of Dads4Kids, who, under the previous Labor government, was appointed, and then sacked, as a men's health ambassador because he described homosexuality as a ''gender disorientation pathology".

Confusion still remains as to what it really means to be the 'Modern Aussie Man.' Photo: Erin Jonasson

Marsh is a strong advocate of the rights of men in custody disputes, funding for men's health issues, awareness of high male suicide rates, and the rights of children to have contact with their fathers. He is a great proponent of traditional marriage.

In 2011, he wrote a particularly nasty opinion piece about marriage which name-checked Penny Wong, whose lesbian partner was expecting a baby. The senator had been congratulated on the impending birth of her baby, he wrote, but ''where are the tears for the fatherless children who medicate their father-wound through their self-destructive alcohol, drug, porn and sex addictions and who will in many cases end up taking their own life?''

Marsh believes that fatherless children create social breakdown. The resulting ''chaos and social destruction is the fruit of the policies of the powerful elites, many of whom are 'ultra-feminists''', he wrote in the same piece. His credentials, such as they are, didn't bother the politicians who showed up to his roundtable forum, who included Labor senator Deborah O'Neill, government whip Philip Ruddock, LNP MP George Christensen and Liberal MP Dennis Jensen. Sandwiches were put on. A tea urn was procured. Media were invited.

The main event of the forum was the launch of a ''white paper'' on the ''Modern Aussie Man'', which was actually a piece of commercial research conducted by the advertising company M&C Saatchi, to investigate the true state of contemporary Australian masculinity.

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Only problem is, if you read the white paper, the modern Aussie man comes across as, well, a paranoid woman-hater who, despite all objective evidence to the contrary, is one of society's victims.

According to the press release for the white paper, ''Man has become a dirty word in our society'' and Australian masculinity has become defined by ''offensive stereotypes''. The white paper was an investigation of whether ''the reality'' of Australian masculinity differs from these offensive stereotypes, which have become ''the new norm in defining men''. It sought to ''give men back a gender voice'' and counteract our society's ''mostly uncomplimentary'' views about men.

''I think all men are being labelled with the stereotype that all men are bastards. Hitler was a lunatic but it didn't mean every German was a lunatic or a fascist.''

Managh interviewed 140 men for the white paper, some high profile, some ordinary. She gleans insights including ''the Modern [Aussie] man misses being able to openly celebrate his masculinity''. Men, she reports, feel pressured to be what their (female) partners want them to be - ''[s]ubsequently, conversations tend to centre around their shared responsibilities and her world.'' The Aussie man will ''never'' cry at work because ''he thinks there's too much crying at work going on'' (we are not named, but by inference I guess it's us chicks doing all that workplace weeping).

The Australian man is ''born to be physically active''. He feels that women equate maturity with humourlessness and as a result he engages in less humour at home than he would like. When he is with female friends and colleagues, he reveals his funny side ''with caution''.

Increasing numbers of men would like to be full-time fathers and they gain ''high levels of self-actualisation'' from the ''task-oriented role of being family protector''.

The paper also reports that ''Australian men love the adventure and discovery of buying'', which will be a surprise to anyone labouring under the stereotype that men loathe shopping. The only men I know who like to shop are gay, and it is clear that the Modern Aussie Man depicted in the white paper is heterosexual.

Managh believes that in advertising a dated assumption exists that 80 per cent of consumers are women, but now that men are taking on more responsibility for domestic chores, they are making more household spending decisions.

Hence, companies should be paying them more attention. They should curb advertising and media stereotypes of men, where they are depicted as domestically challenged fools, sexists, louts and daggy dads.

Managh told me that Marsh helped draft the paper, and certainly his narrow version of Australian masculinity seeps through the document, which, despite its stated aim of crushing stereotypes, divides men into seven types, with names like ''Action Man'' and ''Nurturing Knight''.

The marketing materials for the white paper stated that Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews would be introducing it, along with Senator O'Neill (who, to her credit, criticised the stereotypes contained in the booklet).

Andrews didn't show up and, according to his office, he had not accepted any invitation from the group, or met with anyone from it. When I asked Marsh about this on the phone, he said the minister had been ''held up''. When pressed, Marsh accused me of not caring about male suicide and hung up on me. I rang back a day later to offer him right of reply for this piece, and he responded by reading out a text message about a man's suicide, and again hung up on me.

Teenagers struggling with their sexuality are widely known to be a high-risk group for suicide, but given his views on homosexuality, Marsh's concern about male suicide does not seem to include them.

Politicians and community activists who truly care about the problems of Australian men - their high suicide rates, the terrible health and mortality statistics of Aboriginal men, the social problems associated with fatherlessness, men's reluctance to visit doctors - should distance themselves from the fringe of the men's rights' movement.

And they should definitely not allow their names to be used by an advertising company pushing a ''white paper'' which simplifies men into Hugh Jackman-lite stereotypes, ignores non-white, poor and gay men almost entirely, and which contains less insight than a year 7 social studies essay.

And now for one final generalisation: Australian men are decent, funny, caring and strong. What a pity their cause is being mis-represented by these people.